10 CEOs who made a difference in 2010

After a year of hunkering down and fighting for survival, many individuals and companies in the electronics industry have bounced back in 2010, some more emphatically than others.

The bounce-backs have revived by being more bold and aggressive than usual. They weren't afraid of taking risks and trying new things. They also applied more discipline and a sharper focus on their products, technology developments, and— here's an idea!—customers.

We have picked 10 top CEOs whom we believe made a difference in 2010. Many made gutsy moves intended to change the game in the marketplace, and, in some cases, altered the stagnant culture within their own companies.

Some of these choices might be more obvious than others, but the list is intended to illustrate where efforts by many engineers in the electronics industry are heading right now.

Sit back, scan the lists and apply your own expert analysis. Then, send in your picks to and your selections to our forum. We'd love to compare your lists with ours, and yours with your peers—just to see where the discussion goes and who, a year from now, turned out to be smarter than the average engineer!

I'm sorry but i cannot agree with TI CEO selection.
Nokia is going down, and TI's CPU line is mainly in their phones. a new alliance is formed to replace Win-Tel: QUAL-DROID, with Qualcomm taking over the smartphones CPU market. so where is TI in all that?

Steve Sanghi of Microchip Technology should be on this list. He's the only semi CEO who did not layoff a single employee during 2009-2010 crisis and those loyal employess then turned around and grew his company by 45%. True leadership is at the helm of this highly successful firm that just celebrated it's 80th quarter of profitabilty. Yes 80 quarters... Has any other CEO on the list had that type of track record?

No doubt about Steve jobs, he should be in the list, but c'mon guys, he is already know ww and dominating all known lists.
Why there is nobody from Korea, Samsung's ceo Geesung Choi who is leading his company to top of semicon list, LG new Ceo Koo Bon-joon who is battling hard to get back into business, with success in very short time.
And also where is Doug Grose Ceo of Global foundries, who let his company to win big market share in '10 with huge efforts.

Yeah, who cutted down capacity of company, lost huge business share due to fact of spin offs, no need to talk about depts and created a hocus pocus, ta daa we have new term in the market. I am sorry but Rick Clemmers talent is still premature, in 2011 we would see what NXPs shape will look like after can talk about him...not? :)

I think the author should state the criteria why the people are picked. I believe there are many respectful CEO around but who should the market or industry pay attention very much depend on what view point you're looking at.